Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with the hymn that's found on the back of your
bulletin. Let's all stand together. We'll sing the hymn on the back
of the bulletin. The tune is a Worship the King
? The great hand of God has brought
us again ? ? A favor bestowed we need not in vain ? ? To hear
from our Savior the words of his grace ? ? O may we his glory
Beholden his face. Remember the cause for which
we are met. Alas, my dear friends, we're
prone to forget the motives that brought us the Lord only sees. But if he has taught us ? Our
reasons be these ? To worship our Lord ? With praise and with
prayer ? To practice his words ? As well as to hear ? To own
with contrition ? The sins we have done And take the forgiveness
He gives through His Son. Blest Spirit of God, descend
on us thus. Thy servant assist that he may
teach us the Son's glorious merit, the Father's free grace, The
gift of his spirit to our fallen race. Please be seated. That's what you get for being
gone so long, Tom. Welcome back. You all were missed. Bert did a wonderful job in your
absence. Thank you, brother. It's good
to have Scott and Christine from California with us again. They're
visiting this weekend. We love them and appreciate them.
They live in San Jose, just outside of San Francisco, and they watch
our services with a group of folks out there. And Eric, what's
Eric's last name? Richards, comes up from San Diego
once a month and preaches for them. So we're glad y'all are
here. And the flowers are from Mr. and Mrs. John Myers. We're very
thankful for them. Let's open our Bibles together
to 2 Corinthians chapter 13. 2 Corinthians chapter 13. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful
that once again you've called us to this place and you've promised
to bless us with your presence. You've said that you inhabit
the praise of your people. Lord, how we We hope that our
hearts will be brought by your spirit in worship of thee in
truth. And Lord, that we would know
your presence and know the power of your grace and the forgiveness
of our sin. Lord, we're in need of being
forgiven for not being able to worship you as we ought. So we
pray that we would find the Lord Jesus Christ to be our high priest
bearing the iniquity of our holy things. We confess to you, Lord,
that outside of Christ we have no righteousness in and of ourselves.
We pray that you would increase our faith and give to those who
remain strangers of your grace the faith to rest their souls
on Christ. For it's in His name we pray. Amen. Well, Lord willing, we'll conclude
our study in 2 Corinthians this morning. And in order to understand
chapter 13, we'll go back to the last few verses of chapter
12 and begin again at verse 19. Again, think ye that we excuse
ourselves unto you. We're not defending ourselves,
that's what Paul's saying. We're not justifying ourselves.
We're not even trying to prove ourselves for the sake of promoting
ourselves. That's what he's saying through
all of this. He wants them to believe the gospel that he's
preaching for their benefit. And he goes on to say that in
this verse. We speak before God in Christ, but we do all things
dearly beloved for your edifying. That's what it's about. It's
not to promote the preacher. It's not to compete with another
man. It's for the edifying of God's
people, for the building up of the faith in the hearts of God's
people, that they would find Christ to be everything to them. And so he says, but I fear, verse
20, lest when I come I shall not find you such as I would.
I'm afraid, you know, Paul's been there once. He went there
once and preached the gospel, and the Lord was pleased to save
a group of folks and raise up a church. And then he visited
them the second time when he wrote 1 Corinthians. He calls
that a visit. And now he's visiting them for
the third time in writing to them this second epistle. And he says, I hope to be able
to follow this epistle up with a personal visit. And my hope
is that you're going to believe the things that I've written
to you as they are the word of God. And that's the evidence
of your salvation. that you will believe God. Faith
is the evidence of things hoped for. And so that's what he's
saying. He said, I fear lest I come after
you receive this letter and I find you not as I would. I find you
still resisting the truth of what I've written to you and
still giving a sympathetic ear to those Judaizers that are coming
in behind me and promoting the law and promoting themselves. And he's saying, don't think
that I'm promoting myself against them. I'm not. I'm promoting
Christ. I'm promoting the gospel. And
I don't want you to believe them. and I fear that when I come after
you receive this letter that there may be still some who are
listening to them and not listening to what I've told you because
what I've written to you is the truth this is the Word of God
and so he says I fear less when I come I shall not find you such
as I would and that I shall be found unto you not such as as
you would not now remember Paul was an apostle. He was a penman
of scripture. As an apostle and as a penman
of scripture, he was given certain gifts and authority over the
church that has not been repeated. The reason it's not repeated
is because we have the result of his ministry in the Word of
God. So the Word of God now becomes
our authority. We don't have an individual man
who wields judgment in a church like The apostles did. You remember when Ananias and
Sapphira, right after the birthing of the church after Pentecost,
they lied to the Holy Spirit? And under the authority of the
apostle Peter, God smote them both dead right there in the
church. Paul, in another place, says
that I have, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, the man who is having
an affair with his stepmother, and he says to him, I have turned
him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. That's apostolic
authority. That's power. He speaks of men
like Alexander, the coppersmith, and Hymenas, who he turns over
to Satan. And that's what he's talking
about now. He says, when I come, I'm going to come with apostolic
authority. And I hope that you don't find me to be like you
don't want me to be. I want to come in grace. I want
to come in rejoicing. I want to come in the evidence
of your salvation, believing the Word of God. I don't want
to come finding you listening to those lawmongers uh... because if i do i'm going to
have to exercise my apostolic authority for the sake of the
church for the good of the gospel for the salvation of your souls
and i don't want to come in that spirit so that's what he's saying
uh... i don't want to find you like
i would not hope to find you and you don't want to find me
the way you don't want me to be What's the evidence that he would
have to exercise his apostolic authority? Well, look at it. You know this to be true in your
own experience. What were these Judaizers doing?
They were ruling with authority using the law. They were putting
men under the law. And the result of that is envyings,
wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, and tumults. You want to have conflict in
your home? Try putting somebody under the law. Put your wife
under the law, husband, and see how that works out for you. It's
not going to work. It's not going to work. Anytime
you crack the whip of the law over someone, the strength of
sin is the law. And all it's going to do is cause
all those sinful passions to come alive in one's heart. And so that's the evidence that
these lawmongers, if I come and I find envies and debates, and
rats, we had these things in religion, didn't we? We did. I mean, in our puffed-up, self-righteous
pride, we loved debating doctrine. We love proving ourselves to
be more knowledgeable than our peers. And we created strife
and conflict, and we cracked the whip of church discipline.
You know, you've got to submit to the authority of the elders
and all these things. And all it did, all it did, of
course, all these things were masked with a veneer of spirituality. In that, you know, you act like,
oh, everything's wonderful and everything's fine and we're spiritual
and we love God, but underneath there's these boilings of debates
and envies and wrath and strife and backbiting and whisperings
and swellings and tumults. And these things are contrary
to the gospel of grace. It's self-promotion. Strife and vainglory always go
together. You've heard me say that before.
Scripture puts them together. You want to find the source of
strife in your home or in your relationship with God. It's vainglory. It's somebody
promoting themselves to have authority and not have their
rights met over someone else. And that's what Paul, if I come
and I find this to be the spirit, I know that it's because you're
listening to those lawmongers and you've not heard the gospel.
You're not under grace. Oh, Lord, spare us from that.
spare us from debates and tumults and selfishness and self-righteousness
and self-promotion and control and give us a spirit of grace. If we hear the gospel, if we
hear what Paul's writing about Christ under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, that will be the end result. That will
be the end result. Love and grace and forgiveness,
forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. You see, once God made you to
be a sinner, God makes you to be the chief of all sinners,
then you know that you're in need of more grace than anyone
else. Who are you? Who are you to crack the whip
of the law over someone else? I've asked this question before,
perhaps there's somebody that's not heard it, but I'll ask it
again. The scripture says, to whom much is given, much is required.
And we might look at someone outside of the church and outside
of Christ and think, what a horrible life. you know, that that person's
living and God I thank you that you've spared me from that lifestyle. Nevertheless, nevertheless, who
do you know in your life that's been given more light, more opportunities,
more truth, more blessings, more mercy, and more grace and remain
as unbelieving as you are? Who do you know? You see, we
can't stand the judgment looking at someone else and thinking,
well, you know, I'm glad I'm not like that. I'm worse. No
one in this world has been given as much grace as I've been given
and as many opportunities and as much truth and as much mercy
and as much light as I've been given and remain as unbelieving
as I am. God save me. I'm the chief of
all sinners. And if the Lord gives us grace
to believe that, there won't be tumults. There won't be debates. There won't be strifes. Why? Because we will be esteeming
one another more highly than ourselves. That's the result
of the gospel. Isn't that your experience? Lord, make it to be so for us.
Don't let us fall into this legalistic trap that our flesh would be
drawn to and that we'd be deceived. It'd be possible. If it were
possible, we would be deceived. Lord, spare us from that possibility.
Unless when I come again, verse 21, my God will humble me among
you and that I should bewail many which have sinned already
and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and
lasciviousness which they have committed. The law is a facade to cover
up sin. You show me a preacher that's
preaching against a particular sin in society. And I'll show you a preacher
that's probably guilty of that very sin that he's preaching
against, or if not that sin, some other sin. And that's why
he's preaching against it. He's covering up. It's a cloak of self-righteousness
to cover up the wickedness that's in. That's what these lawmongers
were doing. And yet they were continuing
in the same sins. And is there any sin that a child
of God won't commit and can't commit? If the Lord allows us,
no, there's not. There's not. But will a child
of God remain in that sin? No. No. And that's what he's saying.
There are those who are preaching the law who are remaining in
these sins, and they're using the law as a cloak to cover up
their sin. And Paul says, when I come, I'm
going to know the difference. I'm going to discern it, and
I'm going to expose it for what it is. So my hope is that you'll
that you'll react in grace to the gospel that I'm preaching
and that when I come I'll find this problem to be resolved by
the Word of God. Chapter 13, verse 1, this is
the third time that I'm coming to you in the mouth of two or
three witnesses shall every word be established. This is nothing
new. This is the same gospel message
that I preached to you before. I haven't changed my message
from the first time I came there and from the first letter that
I wrote you. And this is confirmation that this is the Word of God.
And what a glorious book we have. Everywhere we turn to in this
book, it confirms everything else that's in this book. by
the mouth of two or three witnesses. This book is not a contradiction.
It's not like religion. Religion is so contradictory. It's so convoluted. You can't
make sense of religion. They say, oh, it's all of grace,
and then they put you under the law. And then they say, you know,
that God's sovereign, but you have a free will. You just can't
make sense of it. It contradicts itself. The gospel
of God's free grace in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
is the consistent message and theme of this whole book beginning
in Genesis and all the way through to Revelation, in the volume
of the book it is written of me." And we've got a whole lot
more than two or three witnesses. We've got lots of witnesses,
don't we? And even now we have lots of
witnesses, those who would say every time they hear the Word
of God, Amen. Amen. That's my experience. That's
not only my experience in my walk of life, but that's my experience
by the ministry of the Holy Spirit confirming these things to be
true to my heart. Christ is my life. He is my life. I told you before,
verse 2, As if I were present the second
time, and being absent now, I write to them which heretofore have
sinned, and to all others, that if I come again, I will not spare."
Again, he's threatening them. With his authority as an apostle,
for what purpose? To promote himself? To put men
under the law? No. to distinguish the difference
between law and grace. That's what I want to do. And
if I have to use my apostolic authority to do that, then I'll
do it. Now, what authority do we have
now that distinguishes the difference between law and grace? The Word
of God. That's our apostolic authority.
What sayeth the Scriptures? What does God's Word say? And
that's all we need. And God's people bow to what
God says. The child of God doesn't say,
well, yeah, I see that, but what about this? And what about that?
I talk to folks all the time. They've always, always button
the word of God. Uh, and it's no surprise that
that's what goats do. They, but, uh, but the sheep,
they feed on the, on the green grass that God's given. And,
uh, And the Word of God becomes their sustenance because it reveals
to them the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 3, since you seek a proof
of Christ speaking in me. Now what were the Judaizers saying? Paul's not a real apostle. Paul's
saying, if I come, I'll prove to you that I'm an apostle. I'm
gonna come to you with the power of the Holy Spirit. I'll prove
to them that I'm an apostle. They were saying, well, we're
apostles and he's not. And so Paul says, well, since
you seek proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you, word, is
not weak, but is mighty in you. Here's the proof of your salvation. that the word that I'm speaking
to you is mighty in you. It's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth. Why? Because I'm coming to you
preaching Christ. I profess to know nothing among
you save Christ and Him crucified. And if I'm truly a spokesman
for God, then you're going to find the proof of your salvation
in that your hope is bound up in Christ, not in the law, not
in your performance, but in your faith. For though he was crucified through
weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. The Lord was put to death in the weakness
of the flesh, born of a woman, born under the
law, came as the branch, the one that came forth from the
rod of Jesse, as we're going to see in Isaiah chapter 11 in
a few minutes. But here he comes in the weakness
of a man's body, and yet he bears in that body all the all the
sins of all God's people of every generation, and suffers the full
wrath of God's justice in order to put away those sins. Contrary
to what most folks believe, Christ did not die on Calvary's cross
to make an offer of salvation to anybody. He made an offering
to the Father, and the Father accepted that offering that He
made. And through the acceptance of
that offering, all that He offered Himself for were saved. All of them. Everyone for whom
Christ died, their sins were put away, and God was satisfied
with the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ made on Calvary's
cross. So he says, though I was crucified in weakness, though
I laid my life down for the sheep, though I died in the flesh, yet
I was raised by the power of God. The resurrection of the
Lord Jesus Christ is God saying to us, I'm satisfied with what
my son did. And his resurrection is the positive
proof that I'm satisfied and that your sins have been put
away. So what are you going to do to add to that? What are you
going to do to add to that? What are you going to do to take
away from that? Christ did it. It's finished. It's accomplished. Our salvation is done. So that's
what Paul is preaching. He says, For though he was crucified
through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God, for we also
are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of
God toward you. Paul's talking about union with
Christ. What he's saying is that when Christ lived out His life
of perfect righteousness, obeying the law of God, I was in Him. That's my hope. My hope is not
that I've kept the law of God. My hope is that Christ kept the
law of God and that I was found in Him, not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness which is by the
faithfulness of Jesus Christ. That's my hope, union with Christ.
When Christ died on the cross, I was crucified with Him. Was
Paul physically hung on that cross with Christ? No, but spiritually
he was. Spiritually he was, as was every
other child of God. How do I, what's the proof of
my salvation? I'm looking to Christ. I'm looking
to His death on Calvary's cross to satisfy the demands of God's
justice for my sin. All my sin's been put away through
the sacrifice that He made of Himself once for all. we said
I'm crucial when I was raised up when Christ was raised from
the dead 2000 years ago when the Lord Jesus Christ came forth
by the power of God out of the grave everyone for whom he lived
and died were raised with him so he's my he's my resurrection
that's a Paul met when he said all that I might know him and
the fellowship of his suffering and the power of his resurrection
I want to be sure that when He suffered, I suffered in Him.
That when He was raised, I was raised in Him. That when He ascended
into glory, I ascended into glory with Him so that I'm seated now
in the heavenlies in Christ before the throne of God. What are you
going to do to add to that? You see the Judaizers were coming
in destroying the gospel by adding to it. Verse 5, examine yourself whether
you be in the faith. Now, does that mean to sit down
with a pen and paper and make a list of all your sins and make
sure that your sins are repented of? I read someone recently,
they said repentance means that I've turned from my sin and never
returned to it again. If that's repentance, I don't
know anything about it. I don't know anything about repentance.
It's turning to Christ. I hate my sin. God's people hate
their sins. They don't want to sin. The Lord
won't allow them to remain in their sin. But examining yourself
is not making a sin list and trying to figure out whether
or not I'm a Christian by, you know, what's... You examine yourself
like that and I promise you it'll be like going down in a well.
The more you examine yourself, the deeper you get into your
true motives the darker it's going to get. And you're not
going to have any hope of salvation. If God's made you to be a sinner,
you know you've never done anything in your whole life with a pure
motive. You know you've never had a holy thought. You know everything about you
is infected with sin. And you start examining your
sin to see whether or not it passes the muster for being acceptable
to God Our acceptance is in Christ. That's not what he's talking
about when he says examine yourself to see whether you be in the
faith. Prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves?
How that Jesus Christ is in you, lest you be reprobate. I remember
one time several years ago, Trish and I had an old jewelry box
and had a bunch of old jewelry in it. And I had bought a stone
that I wanted to make a ring out of, and we had a friend that
was a jeweler. So we took him this fistful of
gold-looking jewelry, and he was going to melt it down and
make a ring and put the stone in it for Trish. But from the
naked eye, you couldn't tell what was gold and what was copper
or whatever else it might have been, you know. So he took every
piece of jewelry that we brought him. He took a stone and he took
that piece of jewelry and just lightly rubbed it on the stone
and then put a drop of acid on it. And I forgot what color it
turned. If it turned green, it was not
gold. And if it turned something else, it was real gold. And about
half that stuff went in the trash. And the rest of it was real gold
that he melted down and made a ring for her. That's what the word reprobate
means. It means to be tried, to see whether it be true. And the stone is where we're
rubbed. If my faith is true, God puts
it to the acid test, it's going to be proven that the hope of
my salvation is Christ in me. He's the hope of my glory. And otherwise, the word reprobate
here means to be rejected. It means to be rejected. Like
that cheap costume jewelry that to the naked eye looked like
gold, it ended up in the trash. And there's a whole lot of folks
that put on the outward appearance of being the people of God. God's
going to put you to the acid test. And, um, and if you don't
prove, if you, if the hope of your salvation is not completely
in Christ, that's reprobate. It's going in the trash. I don't
care what the outward appearance looks like. You can make jewelry
look like gold and it's really not. Man dresses up the outward
appearance. God's looking at the heart. When
God looks at my heart, what does He see? He sees the faith that
He has given me that confesses that Christ is my life. He's the only hope I've got.
I can't look at the outward appearance of my life to get proof of my
salvation. The proof of my salvation is
my hope. in the Lord Jesus Christ for
all my righteousness and all my justification before let's take